Arrokoth

Detected in 2014, Arrokoth is the most distant and  object  explored by spacecraft so far. 

Arrokoth is the Powhatan/Algonquin word for sky. 

        Credits: NASA/John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Roman Tkachenko

For a great overview of everything space-related see Universe which is streaming on Netflix (an eighteen part series). 

German Library Acquires 400 Year Old Friendship Book

 

Mymodernnet.com reports that a German library,  Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel acquired a 400 year-old "friendship" book containing the signatures of kings and emperors.

This is like a modern day equivalent of a yearbook.

Grants for Cozy Mystery Writers

For my writer friends,

Cozy mysteries accepted between January 1 and November 1.

https://www.malicedomestic.org/grants-program.html

• Authors are invited to submit one work in progress per submission period.
• The Grants Committee is looking for works in progress that are consistent with the Malice Domestic genre of Traditional Mystery, typified by the works of Agatha Christie. These works contain no explicit gore, violence, or sex. 
• The submission period is from January 1 - November 1 every year.
• Please include your author name, story title, brief bio, contact email, and phone number on your submission. 
• Submissions are accepted via email (click below).
• Please contact our Grants Chair Harriette Sackler with any questions regarding your submission or the Grants Program. 

The Memory Garden by Mary Rickert

 

Perfect for Halloween, The Memory Garden by Mary Rickert is a treat. 

Mistaken for a witch, Nan is actually an older lady who happens to have a shoe garden. People send her cast-off shoes and they become the perfect planters for hollyhock, pennyroyal and mallow. 

Along with harsh words, people leave clothes, bread, honey. Eventually, someone leaves a baby in a shoe box. This sets all kind of figurative fireworks and changes the course of Nan's life. 

The author's use of foreshadowing is superb:

"Nan tries to hold her breath against the scent of memory, but there they are, the three of them in whispered conference, standing in the snow, promising to die with the secret of Eve's last hours, bound by the very oath that would tear them asunder."

This is a story of three old women with a dark secret and the baby (now grown into a teenager) whom Nan has adopted.

Similar titles:

Shipman, Viola. The Heirloom Garden. 

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

 

No matter how far they roam, bad luck follows Ella and Alice. Eventually, they settle in Brooklyn where Alice meets someone she recognizes from her past, the man who had kidnapped her a decade ago.

Alice becomes obsessed with her grandmother, Althea Prosperine, whom she has never met. She is also obsessed with reading her grandmother's book, Tales from the Hinterland. Even though its rare, the book has generated a lot of passionate fans who keep in touch on websites.

In Brooklyn, Alice's mother's luck seems to change. She marries a rich man, Harold, whom she thinks she loves. Their love quickly sours and then Ella vanishes; Harold tells Alice that Ella was taken by a group calling themselves "the Hinterland."

Alice's only clues are things left behind by the strange man at the coffee shop: a feather, comb, and bone and a rhyme given to her by one of her Grandmother's "fans."

Albert takes tried-and-true fairy tale elements and gives them a refreshing contemporary context. Time spend in a fairytale world is depicted as a kidnapping; characters from one world or the other are "refugees."  As dark as that sounds, its possible to change a story's ending. Alice breaks her doomed story and one broken story leads to others.  

If readers want to hear more about Alice, there's a second book in the series, The Night Country.   

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

 

In this fanciful and breathtaking novel, two young people are drawn into a dangerous game by their caretakers. Both have been trained in the arts of real magic, not illusory magic, and have been brought up to fight a magical duel.

Marco is an orphan and Celia has a cruel, misguided father. Their challenge will take place at the traveling circus which shows up unannounced at various cities throughout the world. 

The Night circus, which has no clowns and elephants, focuses on the unusual and the sensual. Visitors enter tents to see acrobatics, an ice garden, smell concoctions, or have their fortunes told.

Celia is the circus's illusionist who uses magical arts to impress her audience. 

Though the Marco and Celia realize they are opponents, neither know when or how the challenge will take place. 

Marco, who is based in London, uses the magical bonfire at the circus to refuel his energy. The bonfire also has protective properties which keeps the circus performers from aging.

Though it was not a pact they entered willing, Celia and Marco have ignored the challenge's effects on others. 

Lanie makes this clear to Celia,

"I am tired of everyone keeping their secrets so well that they get other people killed. We are all involved in your game, and it seems we are not as easily repaired as teacups."

The two masterminds, Hector and Alexander, have more to answer for. Fittingly, in the end, Alexander seems to realize the harm his game has caused:    

"It is one thing to put two competitors alone in a ring and wait for one to hit the ground. It is another to see how they fare when there are other factors in the ring along with them. When there are repercussions with every action taken."

 The love story and denouement of this novel are particularly impressive. The conclusion is bittersweet but satisfying. 

Marco and Celia find a way to thwart the game. Uncertain and lost, Bailey finds a mission. Widget, who perhaps possesses the most powerful magic of all, wins the circus with his story telling abilities. 

Morgenstern began The Night Circus in 2003 during NaNoWriMo challenge, an annual online writing challenge in which authors try to complete 50,000 words in November.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

 

Station Eleven is about the Georgia virus, one that is even more disrupting than COVID-19. In this prescient novel, Mandel writes about a virus that ends civilization, eliminating people quickly and with them the knowledge of technology. After it hits, there's no electricity, phone, internet, cars, law enforcement, hospitals, or government. Bands of survivors that set up settlements in abandoned restaurant, hotels, and airports.

The principal characters are all connected in some way to a King Lear production that took place shortly before the collapse in Toronto. An aging actor, Arthur, dies on stage; the actor's childhood friend, Clark, and a child actress in the production, Kirsten, survive. 

While this is a grim scenario, Mandel cleverly knits the factions together. Jeevan, for instance, is an aspiring paramedic that rises out of the audience to try to rescue Arthur. His story interconnects with Kirsten's and the roaming Symphony that band together for art's sake after the collapse. 

Kirsten believes that "survival is insufficient." In addition to survival, there must be beauty and art; thus, she continues to perform Shakespeare with the Symphony in spite of the hazards. The Symphony sometimes wander through dangerous territory and encounter sinister people such as the mysterious Prophet.

The Symphony are all armed and trained, even if they aspire to preserve beauty. Kirsten is an expert knife-thrower who can defend herself in necessary. The Prophet, in contrast, is an armed aggressor who takes what he wants, including children, as his wives. He kills without regard and proclaims himself the "Light."

The Prophet is also connected, Clark soon learns, to his old friend Arthur. Miranda is linked to Arthur and it is her graphic novel, Station Eleven, that provides a clue to the Prophet's origins. Everything is wonderfully knotted together, its up to the reader to unravel the connections. 

HBO is creating a ten-episode drama series based on Station Eleven starring Mackenzie Davis and Himesh Patel. 

Wick Poetry Center

Wick Poetry Center,

https://www.kent.edu/wick

Community poems at the Wick Poetry Center.

Users can read a model poem and than submit one of their own inspired by that model. 

The current community poem at The Wick Center honors nurses. The community can submit poems based on the model poem "Some Days."

https://communitypoems.travelingstanzas.com/somedays

Look Me In The Eye by John Elder Robinson

 Robinson who has written other books about autism has a difficult start in life. He grew up feeling different and not knowing why or how to label it. He was frequently told he needed to look people in the eye. Ostracized by kids, he turned to adults who were more forgiving of his lack of social graces. He learned to love machines (e.g. trains and amplifiers) and could visualize complex equations in his head.

In spite of a high intelligence, he could not adapt to school and dropped out at 16. He was a practical joker who learned to create elaborate devices that would fool the eye. He was also spending more and more time learning the ins and outs of the music industry. 

Eventually, he created a guitar that appeared to explode on stage, which the band KISS became famous for. Several chapters in Look Me in the Eye are devoted to adventures he had while working as a sound engineer for KISS. The band paid well but sporadically. Robison eventually explored a career in the corporate world. 

Despite not having an electrical engineering degree, Robinson found working at Milton Bradley an easy fit. He could designing electronic toys as well if not better than any of the engineers with degrees. 

As good as he was at design, though, he could not hack the corporate culture:

"I was thoroughly sick of all the criticism. I was sick of life.   Literally. I had come down with asthma, and attacks were sending me to the emergency room every few months. I hated to get up and face another day at work. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to stop forcing myself to fit into something I could never be a part of A big company. A group. A team."

Robinson thought the answer is to create his own business, repairing high-end cars like Land Rovers and Rolls-Royces. While that works for awhile, it isn't completely satisifying.

A friend who was also a therapist helps him making a discovery about himself that changes his outlook on life. The chapter, "A Diagnosis at Forty" focuses on his coming to terms with his diagnosis. 

Robinson not only comes to terms with his autism, he also makes peace with his parents who were at times indifferent and abusive while he was growing up.

This is an intimate portrait of one man's journey with autism and how it affected his professional life and personal life. He writes about his son, who also has autism, in a separate book, Raising Cubby. Robison also writes about his search for experimental therapies in Switched On. 

Robison is a scholar-in-residence at the College of William and Mary. 

Things You Would Know if You Lived Around Here by Nancy Wayson Dinan

This is a haunting novel about a girl, Boyd, that feels other people's pain. She feels other people's emotions so deeply that she ends up isolating herself and denying herself what most everyone needs--commitment and love.

Written in a domestic fabulist style, strange things happen in this novel. A woman who has been in a coma for a decade, awakens during the 2015 Memorial day floods in Central Texas. She puts on some clothes taken from a scarecrow and follows Boyd's path.

Boyd is trying to find her friend Issac whom she knows is in grave danger. After escaping a flooded car, he is dangling from a tree that is precariously perched over the flooded river.

In the midst of the storm, ordinary people, like soap-maker, Carla, become completely unglued. Classics professor Kevin is drawn to his ex-wife and the local, mostly stoned, retired high school teacher goes off on a fruitless treasure hunt. 

All of these odd events are juxtaposed with sections entitled "things you would know," and indeed those are things local people know about the Central Texas area. In these sections readers find stories about Maximilian's Gold and other stories unique to the area. 

What this novel ends with is possibility. Boyd changes in the course of the novel to the point where she is  able to let her gifts go; she no longer wants to be the conduit of of other people's pain. 

Reading a novel like this is like running a marathon but in a good way. Oddities and strangeness abound as people make strange decisions in a storm that are life-changing.

Inkspell by Cornelia Funke

In the delightful second novel in Cornelia Funke's Inkheart trilogy, Inkspell, Dustfinger, Meggie, Mo, Farid, and Resa find themselves transported into Fenoglio's Inkworld. 

Farid and Meggie enter Inkworld by choice while Mo and Resa are taken by force. Dustfinger has already taken up residence in Inkworld with the help of Orpheus.  

Inkworld, though, has irrevocably changed--mostly because of Fenoglio's bumbling attempts to fix plot problems. Amusingly, Fenoglio has lost control of his own story. 

The tyrant Adderhead fears death and a mysterious figure known as "the Bluejay." This legendary person, invented by Fenoglio, creates new problems for Mo and his family.

After reuniting with his fellow minstrels, Dustfinger battles with new villians--the Adderhead and his men. The fire-raisers, Basta and Mortola, have joined the Adderhead's retinue. 

Dustfinger, who always seems self-interested and self-absorbed, commits an entirely selfless act for his young follower, Farid.

The journey Dustfinger undertakes for his friend into the underworld promises to take all of the characters in new directions.  

Tinkercad Contest

If you're a teacher or librarian or parent, consider encouraging your child to enter this Tinkercad Contest:

Enter Now!

The Tinkercad Student Design Contest is for all students who are using Tinkercad. To enter, you simply need to post an instructable showing how you made a Tinkercad 3D design as part of your homeschooling experience. No 3D printer is required!

We are giving away two prizes of $100 gift cards for the following five categories:

Make it Move – To win this prize, you need to demonstrate that you have designed and made something with functioning moving parts.

Connectors – This prize is for any project that encourages the creation of connectors. It can be as simple as an L-bracket for a robot or as complicated as connecting a bicycle to power a blender. We are looking for creativity and functionality.

Silly Solutions – Show us an example of how you identified a problem, or something broken, and used 3D design to create a fix.

Mashup – Show us how you took two of your favorite things (or things from the gallery) and creatively combined them to make something new.

Scene – This prize is for designs of physical spaces, from parks and landmarks to undersea adventures.

If you have never posted an Instructable before, here are some resources to help you get started:

How to Write an Instructable Class
Featuring Guidelines
Contests FAQ

Reach out to us directly at service@instructables.com

Only 29 days left to enter the Tinkercad Student Design Contest!

Book Review: Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

Tender Morsels is a strange tale shaped by the interplay of real and magical worlds. As a response to trauma, Liga inhabits a magic world that protects her and her two young daughters. 

Urdda, who is the wilder of the two children, longs to leave the safe haven the moon "bab" has created for her mother. She attempts to rejoin the Bear who has disappeared by jumping up in the air near a cliff's edge. Naturally, this alarms Mam.

"Girls were not meant to fly. Where are your feathers? Where are your wings?" Liga tells her daughter Urdda.

Though she cannot follow this bear, Urdda encounters a second bear.

Eventually, by pushing the walls of the second bear's cave, Urdda leaves her mother's "heaven" or place of her hearts desire.

As soon as Urdda enters this real world, she faces danger. She is chased by a bear--not a real one this time, but a danger nonetheless. She finds her mother's cottage has become a ruin. 

Urdda quickly uncovers Lady Anne's secrets. Lady Anne practiced "hedge" witchcraft against the advice of a more experienced witch. 

Urdda also uncovers Mam's secrets which she immediately regrets. Understanding Mam's situation, Urdda is dismayed that, "she could not go back to that blissful, blessed state of not knowing."

Urdda can only go forward toward her future mission as a witch herself.

If you need another novel marked with strangeness, try Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino.

Book Review: Switched on by John Elder Robinson

Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change by John Elder Robinson. 

Robinson undergoes experimental research--allowing his brain to be zapped with electricity--to see if electric stimulation (transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS) can help improve symptoms of his autism. This is a fascinating journey of self-discovery and personal transformation by the author of Look Me In the Eye: My Life With Asperger's. 

Robinson volunteers to participate in an experimental study at the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center run by Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone. TMS is currently used to treat depression and alleviate migraines but it has yet to be approved for autism patients. 

Robinson volunteered to participate in the study because he wanted to "fix" himself, as  he puts it, but it leads to a growing interest in autism research. This growing interest, as seen in the end of the book, even leads Robinson towards a new career.  

Science fiction writers explore electric stimulation in fiction. For example, Elizabeth Moon's The Speed of Dark has a fictional protagonist undergo a similar procedure. Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon, that Robinson frequently refers to, examines the life changing consequences of brain stimulation on a fictional character. 

Robinson, however, is the first to write a true account of TMS experiments from the perspective of a person who is on the autism spectrum. 

As shown by his narrative, TMS seems to have the potential to improve a patient's emotional intelligence. One of the hallmarks of autism is the inability to correctly identify emotions in others or, often, in themselves. 

Robinson writes a true account of the pros and cons of the experiment. Some of the TMS sessions have no effect and some give him moving flashbacks and even hallucinations that elicit intense emotions.

Clearly, the pros and cons of this kind of research must be carefully weighed. On one hand, Robinson can finally perceive emotions. On the other hand, relationships with his friends and wife deteriorate.

Robinson is a unique case because though he suffers from emotional blindness he is also a highly intelligent self-taught sound engineer, photographer, mechanic and writer. His disabilities are offset by his unique gifts which have allowed him to succeed in many different occupations.

Though the book may serve to give many parents and relatives hope for new forms of autism treatment, some of the experiences Robinson describes may be unique to his own case. Even so, TMS has enormous potential and warrants further research. 

 

Medical Memoir

Medical memoir are a popular subgenre of memoir. These memoirs often explore the psychological aspects of chronic illness. 

Some explore mental illness or neurological disorders like Susannah Cahalan's Brain on Fire and some explore mystery illnesses. For instance, Sarah Ramey's The Lady's Handbook For Her Mysterious Illness explores a woman's attempt to identify her mystery ailment.

For patients suffering similar symptoms, these memoirs can be comforting. Memoirists put into words the same fears and worries that all patients have and, thus, can be powerful. 

Cahalan, Susannah. Brain on Fire.

O'Brien, Meredith. Uncomfortably Numb: A Memoir.

Olstein, Lisa. Pain Studies.

Ramey, Sarah. The Lady's Handbook For Her Mysterious Illness. 

Robinson, John Elder. Look Me In The Eye.

Robinson, John Elder. Switched on: a Memoir of Brain Change. 

A subgenre of graphic novels, graphic medical novels, also deal with medical topics. Personal in nature, these can provide solace as well.

Cornelia Funke's Inkheart Trilogy

The Inkheart Trilogy celebrates the power of readers and writers. So its fitting that Fenoglio who finds himself stuck in Inkworld needs a reader to read him out of his own story. He wishes he could write a different ending.

"I could write one, here and now, and change everything, if only I have someone to read it aloud! Of course he had looked for another Silvertongue but in vain. No Meggie, no Mortimer, not even someone like that man Darius..."

Whenever someone is read into a story, someone or something else is sent out in return. That seems to be the price of the magic spell that works to bring someone out of one world and into the next. When Meggie, Farid and Gwin went into Inkworld, three fire elves came out. 

Fenoglio does not seem to think about the ethics of this; he wants out of Inkworld where the villains he created "ruled...after their own fashion."

Review of Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, the first in the Inkheart Trilogy

Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg

This memoir accurately portrays the turmoil and calamity that befalls a family when one of them becomes mentally ill.

Greenberg's fifteen-year-old daughter suddenly becomes mentally ill; she has visions and is struck inexplicably "mad." Most of the events in the memoir occur during the summer of 1996 in Greenwich Village.

Sally briefly stays in mental hospital where she is given drugs that slowly calm her mania. Greenberg ponder other famous depressives, Robert Lowell, for instance, who wrote eloquently about manic illness. 

Winner of the NAMI Ken book award, this work not only describes Sally's illness but also its terrible effects on other family members--the girl's grandmother, mother, stepmother, and brother. 

Get Out of Your Own Way by Dave Hollis

Hollis, Dave. Get out of Your Own Way.

"I suffered from this disease of always having to be right in any conversation and all arguments for most of my life."--Dave Hollis.

Its honesty like that statement that really drew me in and made me want to read this book. A natural skeptic, Hollis describe a long evolution in his thinking. At first, he was opposed to the self-help movement an is now the CEO of the Hollis company, a company that asserts it gives people the tools to make positive, lasting change.

Library Podcasts

The Librarian Is In, NYPL podcast. Hosts, Frank and Rhonda, Hosts discuss current situation (COVID-19) and what they've been reading in the April 23, 2020 episode. Rhonda discusses Freedom Libraries and Frank discusses The Man Who Loved Children.

Your Shelf or Mine, Longview Public Library podcast (Longview, WA). Discusses the current situation (COVID-19) and discusses a library program the adult librarian is giving along with CORE(a small business webinar). They sound like they are working mostly from home and taking turns to go into the library. The Longview Public Library (WA) offers painting classes online at Youtube. The hosts discuss books they have read.

"If I should have a daughter" by Sarah Kay

This is an amazing poem about motherhood, starting over, finding strength in the face of adversity; its also filled with Sarah Kay's trademark humor.

"If I should have a daughter" by Sarah Kay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQgz2AhHaQg

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman

A Jewish mother, Hanni, makes a sacrifice so her daughter may live. She with the help of a rabbi's daughter brings to life a golem, Ava.

This is no ordinary golem in many respects; she is female, she speaks, and she has some feelings. Golems, which are born without a heart or soul, are not supposed to have feelings. 

The story moves back and forth between Ettie, the rabbi's daughter, and Lea, the girl the golem was created to protect. Ettie becomes involved in the Jewish resistance, along with Victor and his brother, Lea's soulmate, Julien.

This unique novel which uses magic realism captures the darkest hour in human history. Demons hide in trees and angels wander the earth. And then there's Ava whose tattoo on her arm reads "truth." She can speak to birds and has the strength of one hundred horsemen.

Ava can peer into the future; she knows what her ultimate fate will be. The truth is that Ava isn't made by God. In a locket given to her by her mother, Lea has instructions on what she must do to the Golem.

The magical elements never detract though from the real story--the horror of the trains, the camps, the senseless killing.

If you want to read more about this book and the inspiration behind it, I recommend this article from the Jewish Women's Archive by Karen Kashian, https://jwa.org/blog/bookclub/interview-alice-hoffman-about-world-we-knew 

Cornelia Funke's prose in Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro  garnered critical praise when it came out in 2006. Capturing how the human spirit prevails in the face of tragedy, the film rises above most horror/fantasy films. 

A new novel for young adults written by Cornelia Funke captures and amplifies the dark magic of the original. Her prose explains many of the aspects of the film that defies explanation. Here's an example. We learn that the insect "fairy's" favorite game was change: "Change was in her nature. It was part of her magic and her favorite game."

This explains why the "fairy" readily changes form from insect to fairy to carnivore.

While the movie evokes images, Funke's prose also gives us each character's internal train of thought.

In the book and the film, Mercedes has beauty, courage and worldliness. In contrast, Ofelia's  mother is hobbled by insecurity.

Funke says of Ofelia's mother, Carmen: "She sat once more in the wheelchair, as if the Wolf (the Capitan) had stolen her feet. He had crippled her."

All of this is metaphorical; Carmen can walk; she just cannot stand up for herself. 

Carmen does not believe in magic or fairy tales, believing only delusions e.g. she believes she needs the villainous man, Vidal.

Funke states in another breathtaking passage that illuminate Carmen's thinking:

 "We all create our own fairy tales. The dress will make him love my daughter, that's the tale Carmen Cardoso told herself, although her heart knew Vidal only cared for the unborn child he had fathered."

For a deeper understanding of del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, read Cornelia Funke's version.

Leadership

Great leadership advice for managers.

https://www.accel-5.com/learn/video/take-care-of-your-teams-emotional-and-physical-health

Managers must think about the mental and physical health of workers. Healthy employees do more work, turn-over is less, and it is also inherently the right thing to do. 

Workers need to feel socially supported. 

Pfeffer, Jeffrey. Power: Why Some People Have It--And Others Don't.

Sutton, Robert I. and Jeffrey Pffeffer. The Knowing-Doing Gap. 

Photo by Josh Hild from Pexels

Learning at home videos

My county just issued a shelter-in-place. Though emergency personnel are working, many others will have to stay home. YouTube offers some free educational videos for families:

https://learnathome.withyoutube.com/

Amoeba Sisters,

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb2GCoLSBXjmI_Qj1vk-44g

I love the Amoeba sisters; they've even updated their virus video that explains in simple terms how viruses aren't technically living things. Even though they aren't living, lytic and lysogenic cycles allow them to multiply. For ages 13+

HHMI Biointeractive,

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdofq4hHbT3ZDzgYUqsDd1A

Numerous videos with easy-to-understand graphics.

Explains how in Photosynthesis, for instance,  water donates electrons and carbon accepts them, resulting in the formation of carbohydrates. Explains what happens inside the chloroplasts--the light reactions and Calvin cycle.  For High school readers and up.

Write it Down

Professor urges students to write everything down in this unprecedented time. During a pandemic, 'write it down,' University of Virginia professor Herbert 'Tico' Braun urges students.

Actually, this is good advice for all writers. Writing your experiences will keep a record of this time in history; it can also be therapeutic.

photo courtesy of Pexelscom, Tirachard Kumtanom

https://news.virginia.edu/content/write-it-down-historian-suggests-keeping-record-life-during-pandemic?utm_source=DailyReport&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news&fbclid=IwAR09KejyTLZrFNxZ-Up65CjFp6ix84CPXP9wfCQ5c-a1RwTlkZaWJIbI5hI

1917

I watched this film last weekend with a few others. The cinema had limited seating due to the covid 19 outbreak. This was before CDC recommended even greater limitations on gatherings.

1917 is a somber film that depicts a perilous time. Just a year later, in 1918, a pandemic would cause panic and confusion, much like is happening now in 2020.

What struck me at the end was the battalion's lack of gratitude. But then again, if you can't see the whole picture--the aerial maps--than its hard to be grateful.

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

What looks like an accidental drowning might actually be a suicide. Told in alternating voices, this suspense-saturated drama is Hawkins' second novel. 

If you missed it the first time around, like I did, your library probably has plenty of copies.

Nel isn't very well liked in her small community. Even her sister bears a grudge against her. The community resents that she's writing a book about the witchcraft trials and other historical events that took place in Beckford. 

Nel chooses to write not only about the historical deaths by drowning but also the more recent drownings. This infuriates Louise, the mother of a girl who recently committed suicide in the pool. 

Soon afterward Katie's death, Nel also drowns in the drowning pool. Some family members think she has killed herself but others suspect something more sinister.

Among the suspects, there is a jealous sister, a handsome male teacher, a dangerous ex-boyfriend, an outraged mother, and a cantankerous cop.

Nel's teenaged daughter is also in danger, leaving readers to wonder if she will suffer the same fate as her mother and all the other "troublesome" women. 

Though some have said they enjoyed this book less, its actually more enjoyable than The Girl on the Train. Into the Water is multi-faceted and surprising, thought-provoking and riveting. 

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth MacNeal

In this novel, a pair of twins unhappily work in a doll shop and  a collector of rare specimens, Silas, takes interest in one of them. Iris also fall under the gaze of a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters hoping to take Victorian London by storm.

The drudgery of Iris' work is palpable. What she wants more than anything is to become an artist. Louis, a member of the Brotherhood, offers her a chance of a lifetime. He tells Iris,

"I can teach you how to use oils, and perhaps next year you can enter a canvas into the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition."

The offer, however, is contingent upon her becoming a model for him. He promises to also teach her to paint--something that Iris has longed for all her life. 

Her family disowns her after she becomes Louis' model. They feel its unbecoming of a woman to live alone and work as an artists model. This leaves her more vulnerable to the local psychopath, Silas. 

MacNeal skillfully creates this character by first hiding his flaws. Silas originally appears as just another impassioned artist, except in his case he is interested in curiosities. He preserves dead animals and skeletons, butterflies, and other odd assortments.

Oddly enough, several women associated with Silas go missing--Flick, Bluebell, and now Iris. 

The novel skillfully draws readers into the Victorian world. Readers care about the plight of the protagonists--Louis who has gotten himself in a quandary--and Iris who desperately wants to be free to paint. Like the queen in Louis' painting, Iris finds herself figuratively and literally imprisoned. 

In writing that rivals the best suspense novel, MacNeal takes readers into the mind of a serial killer and contrasts it with a desperate woman's fight for freedom. 

What I Wish I'd Known

A really good essay on "writing" by Bonnie Hearn Hill, "What I Wish I'd Known."

She addressed the loneliness, the doubts, but also the triumph. 

She says (of writers):

"We do it because we can’t not do it, riding that bicycle up the mountain, calves screaming in pain, the road nipping at our heels, whispering, “I’ll get you this time.” But we know better because we’ve done it before, because one way or another, we will get to the top, and that’s the reason we do it, one of the reasons, anyway. We do it for that blast of oxygen in our lungs, the certainty of the finish line. We do it for the ride down the hill, that sweet sense of soaring."

Bonnie's essay was the 2019 winner of the contest. For anyone interested, there's a new contest with a March 3rd deadline:

https://writermag.submittable.com/submit/156927/2020-essay-contest

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Blood brothers and members of the Comitatus, Finn and Keiro both have a privileged standing in Incarceron. They are nontheless as the maestra reminds them prisoners. No one can ever leave the living prison that is Incarceron. The prison has many eyes that watch them and a voice that taunt them.

With the aid of a crystal key, Finn, Keiro, Gildas, and Attia hope to escape to the Outside as they Sappique did. After a dangerous escape from the Comitatus, they embark on a quest that tests and transforms them. 

Nearly killed by a beast in a cave, the four of them are rescued by a strange Sapienti called Blaze. Blaze takes them to a high tower where he tries to convince them that there is no Outside. But Blaze and nearly everyone else is not who they say they are. 

On the outside, Claudia's father plans for her to marry an odious boy, Caspar. John Arlex, her father, is Warden of Incarceron but he refuses to tell her anything about its secrets. He only wants to use her as a pawn to achieve power.

At court there are many factions but Claudia does what she can to protect her tutor, Jared, and Finn, whom she believes is the rightful heir of the kingdom. 

Faced-paced and exciting, this novel is a great fantasy for those who love suspense and plot twists. 

Catherine Fisher's official webpage,
https://www.catherine-fisher.com/

Lyric essay

What is a lyric essay?

A lyric essay is a cross between an essay and a lyric poem. In "Knit One,"  Suzanne Cody writes in Eastern Iowa Review about a woman's sorrow and dejection by using the metaphor of knitting:

"Sorrow ravels the sweater from the bottom--a slow, slow process. He appears to think the young woman doesn't notice. But she does. He may well know this, but likes to pretend." 

Their relationship is becoming unraveled just like the sweater:

"If you don't make time for this, eventually the pulling will go faster than the stitching and there will be nothing left between you and me but a pile of tangled wool"

The term lyric essay was invented by the late Deborah Tall, a professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Tall wrote A Family in Strangers in which she employed the lyric essay, a form she has been obsessed with for thirty years. 

Resources:
http://outofboundsradioshow.com/exc_audio_post/deborah-tall-poet-writer-and-professor-of-english-at-hobart-william-smith-colleges-geneva-ny/

The Brigands by Parris Afton Bonds

Set in Matamoros, this exciting romance explores the events that led to the formation of Texas. Filled with real and fictional characters, the basic outline of the story remains faithful to the historical record. The provisional government was rife with tension. Land speculation or “Matamoros fever” resulted in some land titles to be sold illegally. 

While there’s no record of a double agent, like the nefarious Chaparral Fox, the provisional government had many factions and dissenters. James Fannin’s decision to capture the port of Matamoros divided the Texas army, weakening the forces at the Alamo.

Against the brewing unrest in Tejas y Coahuila, many strong-willed characters come into conflict with each other. Rafaela, who was raised in England, learns that she must marry a man she loathes, Paladin. Her father arranged for her to marry Paladin, a Baron, for his title. In return, the Baron would receive a dowry and the ability to pay off debts.  The dark brooding Baron clearly prefers the Fiona, the feisty Irish woman hired to become Rafaela’s companion.

Fiona, wonderfully delineated by Bonds, is the kind of humorous, hard scrabble character that is a joy to discover. Deprived of many things in childhood, Fiona determines to get her due. Gutsy and determined, she will not back down to Paladin who claims ownership to the same rich parcel of land that she does.

Rafaela appear altogether different, yet in many ways, she is similar to Fiona. She wants a home more than riches; she desires true love and not an arranged marriage to a dilettante. Though Rafaela tries to resist the charms of Niall, Paladin’s friend, she finds herself inevitably drawn to the penniless Irish Traveler. 

What makes this novel exciting is the expert pacing.  In scene after scene, these characters risk everything for a chance at true love and happiness.  In one of the most pivotal scenes, Fiona, with Rafaela’s help, turns her carriage around, as a bridge goes up in flames. By choosing to turn her carriage around, she’s throwing in her lot with Paladin and the revolutionaries. The plight of the mismatched lovers is not dissimilar to the plight of the ragtag Texas army that defies the odds.